ObamaCare violates the Constitution down to its “very DNA,” said Sen. Orrin Hatch in a speech on the Senate floor on February 9. “At its core, the law and its expansion of government are a threat to personal liberty…As the state controls more and more of our lives to further a political agenda, our freedom is put in greater and greater jeopardy.”

The controversy over ObamaCare’s mandate for “free” preventive care is the most recent.

The issue is being disguised as a fight over whether women should be guaranteed access to “free” sterilization procedures and contraceptives, including drugs that cause abortions. But the real question is over whether health plans and employers can be compelled to provide products and services that violate their religious beliefs.

“Religious freedom — which has been called ‘our first liberty’ — is ingrained in the very fabric of our national culture,” Sen. Rand Paul wrote recently. “But HHS and the administration have decided that their goal of state-run health care trumps our first liberty. What the president is attempting to do here is something generally witnessed only in totalitarian and authoritarian regimes.”

Two constitutional questions are before the Court in this term: First, the court will decide whether families can be compelled to spend up to $20,000 of their ownl money to buy a private product (expensive health insurance) every year for the rest of their lives, or pay a fine. The Obama administration argues government does have this power under its interpretation of the Commerce Clause of the Constitution.

Second, the court is being asked to decide whether states can be compelled to expand access to their Medicaid programs, which many states say would bankrupt their treasuries. The constitutional question here is the meaning of states’ protection from federal incursion under the Tenth Amendment. The states are being commandeered by the federal government to implement key aspects of the healthcare law. If they refuse, the federal government will come in and take over.

One year ago, Obama said, “This legislation will also lower costs for the federal government, reducing our deficit by over $1 trillion in the next two decades. It is paid for. It is fiscally responsible. “

Today: ObamaCare is projected to cost at least $2.4 trillion when it is fully implemented. Instead of Obama’s promise to reduce the deficit, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimates that ObamaCare will increase the federal deficit by $260 billion through 2019. The United States has more than $14 trillion in debt already.

2. Kills Jobs

One year ago: Former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D.-Calif.) said that the health care bill “will create 4 million jobs — 400,000 jobs almost immediately.”

Today: The only jobs that have been created from ObamaCare are the tens of thousands of new government bureaucrats who have been hired to deal with all the new regulations and taxes from ObamaCare.

Contrary to Pelosi’s prediction, the director of the CBO testified that 800,000 jobs will be lost over the next decade as a result of the law. Even the liberal Urban Institute released a report this week that said that the health care law will have “no noticeable effect on net levels of employment.” Employers are forced to either cut jobs or move workers into part-time slots that are not mandated to receive health insurance in order to meet the regulations, according to the CBO.

3. Lose Your Own Doctor and Health Plan

One year ago: Obama said, “If you like your current insurance, you will keep your current insurance. No government takeover. Nobody is changing what you’ve got if you’re happy with it. If you like your doctor, you will be able to keep your doctor. If you like your plan, you can keep it.”

Today: New regulations could force as many as 87 million Americans to lose their current health care plans and their own doctors.

As soon as the new ObamaCare regulations were announced, companies told their employees that they may not be able to keep their current health care plans because of the increased expense. So Obama’s secretary of Health and Human Services started issuing one-year waivers that exempt companies and unions from complying with the law if it causes a significant increase in premium costs or decrease in access to coverage.

ObamaCare is so broken that the Obama administration has spent the last six months exempting its union friends and large companies from the law. In this one year, the Obama administration has already issued 1,040 waivers to unions and employers, which thereby exempt 2.6 million people from ObamaCare regulations.

But small businesses and non-union workers who do not have the resources or access to the administration’s waivers will be forced to drop their employees’ current health care plans.

4. States’ Budget Deficits Grow to Possible Bankruptcy

One year ago: Obama said, “It will take four years to implement fully many of these reforms, because we need to implement them responsibly. We need to get this right.”

Today: The states, which already have a collective $175 billion budget shortfall this year, are faced with such huge new mandatory costs from ObamaCare that some are on the verge of bankruptcy.

The main cost of the law’s plan to states is from expanding Medicare to add 20 million more people to the program. Medicare accounts for an average of 22% of state budgets. The Medicare expansion will cost the states $118 billion through 2023. States are cutting other programs such as education and law enforcement in order to make up for the shortfall in the new federal mandates.

Already, 28 of 50 states have challenged the constitutionality of the health care law’s individual mandate in court. Judges in Virginia and Florida have ruled that ObamaCare is unconstitutional. These and other cases are expected to be resolved in the U.S. Supreme Court.

5. Higher Insurance Premiums:

One year ago: Obama said that the law will “lower the cost of health care for our families.”

Today: Some Americans have already had a spike in the cost of their insurance premiums of an astounding 20% to 60%. Insurance companies have raised premiums in double-digit increases. For example, Blue Shield of California recently increased some of its individual plans by 59%, saying that 4% of the increase is a direct result of the new health care law.

Now, the CBO projects that the average American family will pay $2,100 more on health care premiums when the law is fully implemented (an increase of 10% to 13%).

6. Crushes Businesses

One year ago: Obama said that the law will “lower the cost of health care” for businesses.

Today: While the economy is barely growing at all, companies are facing a government mandate to provide health care for their employees. The law will cost at least $50 billion to employers because of these new mandates.

Even the CEO of Starbucks said this week that his company is struggling to meet the ObamaCare regulations. His company spent $250 million last year on health care benefits, and the costs are expected to rise by double-digit percentages. He said that if his company is struggling, he believes that “under the current guidelines, the pressure on small businesses, because of the mandate, is too great.”

7. Fewer Americans Have Access to Health Insurance

One year ago: Obama said, “And we have now just enshrined, as soon as I sign this bill, the core principle that everybody should have some basic security when it comes to their health care.”

Today: Employers are facing huge increased costs or fines, and so will be forced to find ways to make fewer employees eligible for health benefits. Experts estimate that as many as 35 million American workers will lose health care benefits because of the higher cost put on companies from ObamaCare.

Also, an estimated half-million children will lose health care because of the new law. Big health insurance companies such as Anthem Blue Cross and Aetna have already dropped offering child-only policies in 19 states because they are too costly under the ObamaCare regulations.

8. Senior Citizens Lose Medicare Coverage:

One year ago: Obama said, “We’re not going to mess with Medicare”.

Today: The health care law cuts nearly $530 billion in Medicare over the next decade, with $200 billion coming from the Medicare Advantage. As one in four seniors is currently enrolled in the Medicare Advantage program, approximately 7 million of them will lose access to the popular program. Many seniors have already been cut off their plans.

There are 46 million seniors in the Medicare program, but the ObamaCare provisions could drive the program into bankruptcy and prevent doctors from accepting it. Physicians will have a nearly 30% cut in reimbursements next year from ObamaCare.

Even the Obama administration’s chief Medicare actuary reported, “Providers for whom Medicare constitutes a substantive portion of their business could find it difficult to remain profitable and, absent legislative intervention, might end their participation in the program (possibly jeopardizing access to care for beneficiaries).”

9. Overburdens Small Business

One year ago: Obama said, “This year, we’ll start offering tax credits to about 4 million small businessmen and women to help them cover the cost of insurance for their employees.”

Today: Obama has already conceded that a provision in his law is so onerous to small-business owners that he asked Congress to fix it.

More than 40 million small businesses are subject to this new regulation. So the Internal Revenue Service requested to hire 1,270 new bureaucrats to help handle the paperwork for provisions in implementing the new taxes from ObamaCare.

10. Tax Hikes

One year ago: Obama said, “Millions of people will get tax breaks to help them afford coverage, which represents the largest middle-class tax cut for health care in history.”

Today: The ObamaCare law includes more than $813 billion in total tax hikes over the next decade, which include the penalty for not having health insurance, and taxes on health plans ($60 billion), medical devices ($20 billion), and prescription drugs ($27 billion).

After President Obama signed the health care law, he said this: “And now that this legislation is passed, you don’t have to take my word for it. You’ll be able to see it in your own lives. One of the Republican leaders said this was going to be Armageddon.

This story Byron York had in the Washington Examiner on March 31st: “Uncovered: New $2 Billion Bailout in Obamacare.” Two billion of corporate cronyism, or crony capitalism, if you will. For example, AT&T got $140 million to subsidize health care plans. Verizon, $91 million. General Electric, despite not paying any US income taxes last year, got $36 million. General Motors, Obama’s car company, received $19 million in bailout money in order for them to be able to more easily afford health care within their companies.

IRS: We Need $359 Million to Deal With Obamacare, the agency is seeking to increase its resources in preparation for Obamacare implementation for 1,054 new auditors and staff — at a cost of $359 million to taxpayers.

The increase request is due to the enormous challenges the agency faces, according to US News & World Report. Among the requests to meet those challenges: new facilities; new IT systems; modification to tax processing systems; taxpayer outreach services; and changes to notices, case management, and collections methods.

To keep up with the healthcare overhaul, a task force of 76 agents will oversee drug makers and importers to ensure they adhere to new fees.

Another 81 members will be assigned to handle the tax reporting of tanning salons, which face a new 10 percent tax on tanning services.

112TH CONGRESS
1ST SESSION H. R.
To repeal the job-killing health care law and health care-related provisions
in the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act of 2010.
IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
Mr. CANTOR (for himself and [see ATTACHED LIST of cosponsors]) introduced
the following bill; which was referred to the Committee on

A BILL
To repeal the job-killing health care law and health carerelated
provisions in the Health Care and Education
Reconciliation Act of 2010.
1 Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representa

After fighting against health-care reform insurers and drug makers are fighting to keep it.

In exchange for tighter regulation and new directives, insurers, drug makers, hospitals and physicians will get some 30 million new paying customers under the individual mandate requiring everyone to buy insurance or pay a fine starting in 2014.

The insurance and health care industry are lobbying to keep the mandate. The prospect of 30 million new customers has helped to create a 7.4 percent increase since Jan.1 in the standard & Poor’s 500 Managed Health Care Index.

Doctors and hospitals don’t want to give up Medicaids expansion to 16 million new people.

Drug makers worry a repeal could undo a side deal that stops Medicare from negotiating drug prices, plus the agreement to continue blocking the re-importation of drugs from Canada. Both deals help drug makers to fend off pressure to lower drug prices.

I guess they were against reform until they found out there was money to be made from it.